Postcard 96

Today is a day of disdain. Please, goddammit, don't talk to me.
My hands, they hurt are sore, are tight, are stiff, are pain.
The air is crisp, the ground is steaming hard.
My empty hands are filled with strain. Desire.
Reason is to desire, irrelevant. My never-silent hands speak in open-closing pain.
They are screaming to create: that never filled desire that only grasps at soon-to-be.
Create: to paint, to ply to press, to pull up weeds, create a patch.
Bending fingers toward a thing or lack, the sweat and grip of pulling time into the now,
into a never satisfying was.
To create: the belly urge to hold in palm the beauty of 'to be'.
To create: is to, at least, participate. To draw up hot what cooling words cannot.
To finger-dig, to feel nails drawn back with smooth flesh resist. Those fingernail nerves that pass all through.
To plow, to sew, to reap to burn.
To skin to skin apprehend your passing beauty, the beauty I have hand in, in the holding, in the letting go.
In autumnal beauty held in pain, for a moment we substantiate, and then again again again, desire.

Lost Postcard 1

The man enters the building unimpeded. In fact, though it is large, heavy and foreboding, it draws him in as if its created gravity that obliterated other options. He is prepared as he entered. He has all the things he was told he would need. In the bustling neighborhoods surrounding the building were kiosks and stalls selling pamphlets, magazines and pinging his phone with guides, diagrams and evaluations, each informing him of a unique requirement that was of course, conveniently available at the same location. He was bright. He took these scams for what they were. But still, he succumbed to the atmosphere of caution and equipped himself minimally, but at great cost. Stepping across the threshold, he takes stock. He is trim and manicured, dressed stylishly but not at the expense of utility. His clothing is fitted but loose and durable. He brushes his hands over is pockets, reassuring himself of their contents: high-end multi-tool, unassuming pistol (very comforting), micro hygiene/first-aid kit, and of course his phone, uploaded with premier mapping, how-to, social connect and identifying apps. Finally, two flasks -- one hydration and one whisky, both high-end contents. No one could say he was unprepared,  he considered with confidence. Entering the anteroom, he is surprised to find it more of an atrium than a receiving room, or a hall. It's wild and feels vast, more dangerous and expansive than the manicured grounds. He moves through it, unable to determine where he should next go. Doors are bolted or rusted shut and overgrown. The phone offers no help and only says "seeking, seeking...". For the first time in his adult life, he man feels scared and groundless. He makes himself overconfident.

Postcard 86

That monkey on my back looks too much like me, perched up there on sharp knees. Old man of the sea, is there no end to his pestering? He pulls each ear to guide my steps and turn my path. He covers my eyes, each hand a screen. All about, this foreign world is protean and mean. His voice, thin and reedy, says: see what you may. I look along our pathless paths and see flowers and nymphs, anemone. He removes is reedy fingers and look: pestilence and pain. He leads me along flaking cliffs and ambuscades. All that is illusion too. His other fingers hold my face, and those he removes. We are in void of sea or space. He leers and speaks: to get what you wish, first you must catch simian me. And though he is all sharp elbows and stabbing knees, he's as hard to hold as mercury. And I feel old and godlike, and I feel young and horribly free. And what if what I would wish would be to catch and hold the beast? And what if 'simian me' is not him but me. And what if I'm just turning on myself, meaningless in a boiling sea?